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nydus/The Gods of MexicoPublic
Page 295 of 670
Table of Contents

CHAPTER V

seen in the representation of gods in the Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio), and which seems to me to be a development of the chicaunaztli, or rain-rattle.

Xochiquetzal and Tonatiuh.

MYTHS

Perhaps the most important of these is that found in the Sahagun collection of songs or hymns (the ninth item):

Out of the land of the rain and the mist

I, Xochiquetzal, come.

Out of Tamoanchan.

The pious Piltzintecutli weeps;

He seeks Xochiquetzal.

To the land of corruption I must go.

The goddess here declares that, like other fertility goddesses, she comes from the fruitful supernatural country of Tamaonchan, the home of the maize. Piltzintecutli, the Sun-god, seeks her, but, like Ishtar in Babylonian myth, she must betake herself to the

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